Tesoro Sagitta Optical Gaming Mouse - Hardware Review

Tesoro has been a longstanding favorite around here; I loved the Kuven and simply cannot get enough of the Excalibur mechanical keyboards. So when the company took a step back to recharge I was both excited and concerned, waiting for their next major release.

Here is one of my favorite peripheral companies slowing down on their output which meant that I would not be seeing any new gear for a while, and that is a sad thing. On the other hand I was super pumped; I mean, this is one of my favorite peripheral companies that is taking a step back and saying "We can do better; we are GOING to do better" yet their gear was already fantastic, meaning that things are only going to get better. It is a reason to for fans of Tesoro to look to the future with shiny bright eyes.

Well the future is now, as Tesoro just launched their Sagitta gaming mouse and true to form, it is wonderful. Build quality is spectacular; it feels solid without weighing a hundred pounds. The click actuation for the thumb, left, and right mouse buttons is meaty, solid, reliable. The matte black rubber-like body is grippy, does not induce sweating (for those folks that get really into their games), and is durable so it can take the abuse of hundreds upon hundreds of hours of mouse-destroying clicks.

Beneath the middle mouse button and resting in the center of the palm rest are programmable LEDs that are vibrant without being so bright that it is distracting as night wears on. The left and right "panels" on the mouse are ever-so-slightly ergonomic in design and covered in a wonderful piano black gloss coating. I do have some reservations about the use of piano black here though, as in my experience mice with gloss coatings tend to show wear-and-tear quickly as the gloss simply cannot withstand the salt and oils in the skin; time will tell.

The 5000 DPI rating for the mouse is wonderful, as the mouse slides over the Mionix Sargas 320 gaming surface smoothly and with little effort, and picks up any crumbs that I may have left on the mat (because I am a horrible person). There is a reprogrammable button south of the mouse wheel that in its default setting switches between a few factory-set DPI settings; slow, "normal" and "melt-the-skin-off-your-face" fast. I prefer setting number three, as it requires the least movement (hey, no judging; I am an energy conservationist). In fact, the whole mouse is reprogrammable using Tesoro's Sagitta driver software (which you will want to/need to download, as the "forward" and "back" thumb buttons are inexplicably reversed in their default layout).

I also recommend running their firmware update as the good folks over at Tesoro are constantly updating the drivers and firmware to improve performance and usability. In truth the biggest complaint that I have with the Sagitta is not really with the Sagitta itself, but rather in Tesoro's lack of a single unified driver control center for all of their devices (like SteelSeries Engine 3 software center). As I have multiple Tesoro devices connected to the computer and am running their software applications in the background, there are a handful of identical Tesoro masks in my System Tray taking up valuable real estate while not having any defining icons to distinguish the purpose of each app without having to mouse-over and wait for the pop-up.

That said, the Sagitta is nigh on par with mice that cost two or three times as much, with the only "wild card" being the durability of the piano black side panels. If all goes well and that piano black finish stays true to the original shiny goodness? Well this mouse may well be one of my favorite go-to mice. Perhaps I will post an update in the comments below after a few hundred more hours of abuse. However, if you are in the market for an affordable gaming mouse with oodles of options (including macros!) and a little customizable lighting flair, the Tesoro Sagitta is absolutely for you.